


In Color

by AbelQuartz



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, Holding Hands, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Jamweek, Movie Night, Past and Present, Steven Universe Future, Tea, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-19 14:20:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22579048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbelQuartz/pseuds/AbelQuartz
Summary: #JAMWEEK 2020In the past, Steven and Connie talk about what the future might hold in a night of bad movies and giggles. In the future, Steven and Connie have to talk about what the future’s brought them. Like a bad sequel, things always change in the ways we can’t prepare for.
Relationships: Connie Maheswaran & Steven Universe, Connie Maheswaran/Steven Universe, Greg Universe & Steven Universe
Comments: 4
Kudos: 59
Collections: Steven Universe Completed Recommended Reads





	In Color

Steven and Connie were frozen in anticipation. Greg, paying them no mind, hummed as he fiddled with the plugs in the back of his television set. The two kids held their breath, with Steven’s hand gripping the folded bag of popcorn and Connie’s hands clutching the DVD cover tightly. It only took a couple seconds until Greg stepped back and pressed the power button on the player. The screen snapped to attention, humming gently until the screen turned blue and the words INSERT DISC appeared in the corner.

“Looks like we got the player working just fine, guys!”

Both the children cheered, and the three of them descended into laughing in the back of the car wash parking lot. Dusk was settling over the town, a summer dusk filled with royal purples and pinks, warm air blowing over the ocean as stars peered through, as if wondering what all the commotion was about. Greg has finagled his old television with the old DVD player they had brought over from Connie’s house, for a night of straight-to-video movies and a sleepover in the back of the van. Beach chairs and blankets were aimed at the open doors where the screen bulged out. The light was just gone enough for the blue light to start making patterns on the asphalt.

“Dad! Can you make us popcorn while we get movies sorted?”

“Sure thing, kiddo!” Greg said, taking the handoff.

As Greg started to walk back towards the car wash building, Connie knelt down to her backpack and pulled out a few jewel cases. The Universes had brought a couple old animated movies down from the house, but Connie brought out some from her backpack. Steven remembered that she had been planning a surprise for this sleepover.

“So, I saw this online and thought of you, and my mom thought I was crazy but I knew we had to get it just to see how awful it is,” Connie said.

The girl turned around and showed the cover to Steven. In a matter of seconds, his brain registered excitement, then confusion, then finally settled on an appropriate level of doubt and apprehension.

“Why would they make another  _ Cookie Cat 3D _ movie?” Steven asked. “Why would a straight-to-video come with the budget for those 3D glasses? Something tells me this is gonna be awful. I love it!”

“I  _ know _ , right?”’

Connie put the case on top of the DVD player, then started fishing out other movies from her backpack, more than they could possibly watch in one night. The plan was simple: they were going to enjoy their time in the parking lot under the stars, watch movies of varying quality, then when it got cold and they couldn’t keep their eyes open they would head back to the beach house and sleep it off. Connie finished off the stack, then set her backpack on the ground.

“Hey, you didn’t finish telling me about that mission with Peridot,” she mentioned. “How did that go? You guys had a little sleepover of your own, right?”

“Well, a sleepover, a campout, something like that. The sand was really cold and I think I brought a scorpion home on accident in the back of my shirt. I don’t know, Pearl doesn’t enunciate well when she’s screaming. But we got the Gem!”

“I would have loved to see that. When’s the next mission you guys have planned?”

“I don’t really know. We took care of the stuff in the Kindergarten, and aside from that, I guess Garnet just sort of...knows where important things are and when we should go. I’ve never really figured out how we track corrupted Gems.”

“Well, better than them tracking us,” Connie said, “even though they might even show up here again. Like that worm?”

Of course Steven remembered the worm; the glowing bracelet was still in his freezer back at the house. Bringing Connie on missions was fun, and he wished she could get away more often for their adventures. But she had to focus on school, and he knew her parents weren’t thrilled with the idea of their preteen daughter fighting monsters, so sleepovers like this had to do. And Steven was fine with that. Goofing-off time was important, doubly so when you had someone to goof off with.

“Well, when we get something like that, we can take care of it, right?” Steven said. 

“Of course we can!”

The two children revved up their hands, then slapped them together in a high-five that echoed across the parking lot.

“ _ Jam Buds! _ ”

Beside one of the chairs was Rose’s sword, and next to it a small bag with a change of clothes for Connie in the morning. Steven imagined that sword in the canyon, with Connie’s expertise cutting off the speedy monster in its tracks. She would have argued with Peridot to no end about the best way to track down and intercept their quarry before they all had their lesson around the campfire. With the Gems having been there all along, Steven imagined they’d have kept a close eye on the girl. Too many ‘clods’ from Peridot and the little Gem might have been bubbled again.

Steven and Connie had done fine on their own in the wilderness. For a brief moment, Steven imagined how it would be for them to travel searching out corrupted Gems, just the two of them all the time. It would be the ultimate adventure, staying on guard, journeying through the wilderness, having to put on disguises and take shelter. And they could do it all together, provided Connie could get out of school. There were always human things in the way. But that’s just how it had to be.

Connie saw Steven looking at the sword, at her. She walked over to one of the chairs, then pulled it up to another, the armrests flush. The girl sat down in one of them, leaning forward onto her knees with a hand propping up her chin.

“Do you think you’ll be hunting down Gems forever, Steven?” she asked.

“I hope not,” Steven said. “I mean, the real goal of this all is to find some sort of cure. All we do with the bubbles is make sure that the Gems we capture can’t hurt themselves or each other. They don’t deserve to be corrupted, but right now, there’s just no right answer.”

“Well, I mean — is that what you want to do?”

“Like, with my life?”

Connie didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to. Steven took a seat next to her with his hand on the armrest. He stared at the flickering blue screen and the tower of movies next to it. Whatever they watched, it was time they spent together. Why did that matter to him now? What if they needed to spend it differently, and they only knew after the movie was done? Steven tapped his fingers.

“Maybe we’ll be chasing down Gems until I’m all grown up,” Steven said. “But I’m still the only one with healing powers. I have to be there and find a way to help them. Peridot doesn’t know a thing about them. Homeworld doesn’t have the resources. I have to be there.”

“Do you want to be there?”

“Yeah! None of those Gems had a choice when they were corrupted! And they lost every part of who they used to be. I can’t imagine that happening. I don’t want it to happen to anyone else.”

He felt a touch. He looked over to where Connie’s hand had rested on top of his, then into her eyes. She was smiling, but Steven couldn’t quite place what kind of smile it is. Maybe it was pride. Maybe sympathy. The two never had to ask what one thought of the other, not really. There was always this shared sense of love that Steven felt even now, through the curl of her fingers over his own.

The door to the car wash slammed. Greg’s whistling carried over the parking lot as he opened the steaming bag of popcorn. Steven gasped and pulled his hand back towards his lap as Connie made a similar retreat. The children glanced at each other. Steven didn’t know exactly why he had pulled away. Greg had seen them hug each other before, even fuse. Maybe holding hands was an unwelcome invitation for questioning and raised eyebrows; all parents could sense an uncomfortable conversation and pry it out into the open like a crab being pulled indignantly from its home in the mud.

“I know it’s a beautiful night, but I really would have liked to use the kitchen for some of this,” Greg said as he walked over. “We could add some cheese, some garlic salt, a little extra butter — you know, the real good stuff.”

“Or cinnamon sugar!” Steven piped up.

“You two really have popcorn down to a science.”

“It’s the Universe stomach! You gotta try it all once!”

Greg patted his belly like a drum as Steven shoved his face into his hands in embarrassment. But Connie merely giggled and got up to look at the DVD stack.

“Save the popcorn for the action, guys,” she said. “Why don’t we start with the  _ Dogcopter  _ movie? It’s bad enough to set the mood, and there’s only two glasses for the  _ Cookie Cat _ movie so we can’t all watch it without a headache.”

“I’m game if you guys are!”

“Sounds good, Connie!”

The lid popped off, the disc slid in, and Connie stayed by the played to press the buttons skipping all the various knockoff previews. Greg passed the popcorn over to Steven, and the boy held the bag in his lap. One piece, that was all — he chewed slowly as he waited for Connie to get back to her seat so they could share. The menu froze, then the animations began to blow across the screen, with the heroic half-canine half-chopper blazing into view.

Of course it was bad. They didn’t expect it to hit any notes that the series hadn’t hit already in the main series, the comic books, or the TubeTube shorts. Background quality was bad enough for Steven and Connie to point out the faces and animation errors in the background, the lifelessness of the CGI streets and the city, the way the explosions were always just impactful enough to be noticed but not enough to actually feel like explosions. Greg was laughing at the incomprehensibility of it all, while Steven and Connie chewed up popcorn and bemoaned what had become of their once-beloved franchise. But it had always been cheesy, hadn’t it? A couple years ago they would have been blown away by it all. Steven remembered the first time his dad had taken him to a  _ Dogcopter _ movie. It was a simple family bonding moment, something that modern parents just did. The boy had been six or seven. He didn’t remember a thing about the day now, but he recognized the impact.

As the movie droned on and they lost themselves in the laughs, Steven wondered what Connie was going to do about all the Gem things. He wanted her to be around. They really could hunt together more, and if Connie grew up to be a scientist or a physicist or something, then she could even help look at corruption from a new perspective. They could mix and match it all together. He didn’t know where Connie would be, but she would be brilliant, and he’d be doing his best. Steven briefly considered going to school. Maybe when he could go to college when he was older.

He knew that Connie was going; her parents wouldn’t have it any other way, and neither would she. And while she was away, Lion could take Steven to come visit her around campus, like he had when he came to her school that one time. By that point, would there be any rogue Gems left on Earth? Or were there too many to handle in one lifetime?

With Connie, they could make short work of them all. But life wasn’t all about fighting corrupted monsters and adventures. It was about hearing Connie laugh and cover her mouth to stop popcorn flying out. It was about sitting with her here and watching all kinds of movies and understanding how ridiculous they were, lounging with his father and best friend under the stars.

* * *

The spring was late, but the runoff was giving the grass something to live for nonetheless. On the top of Lighthouse Park, little patches of snow were stranded like sandbars in a sea of fresh wet grass. Everything was learning how to be green again. At night, the blades would freeze solid, trapped in the patterns taught to them by the wind, and then at dawn they would stay mangled but alive, as if after all this time they were meant to grow crooked.

Steven zipped up his letterman. The porch was a good place to stop thinking for a bit. His hands wrapped around the mug, warmed by the tea inside. Pearl had bought him some ginger-infused honey, to add a little deterrent to late-season colds, before she took the schedule down to Little Homeschool. Amethyst didn’t take kindly to the Gems who had started to learn about pranks and extracurricular nonsense from watching too many Earth teen comedies, and was working on a disciplinary program, much to Steven’s chagrin. But Garnet was there to temper her and run her usual yoga class. To better run the program — and to stop Steven from working himself to the bone while they were gone — the Gems had swiped his notes and calendar, and Pearl had disabled his alarm. It was almost eleven by the time Steven got up. When was the last time he had slept in? His memory was overclocked, but he still couldn’t place it.

When was the last time he was alone as well? Steven didn’t want to think about that. Whatever it meant to be alone, it had always been a net negative for him. Now the memories came back, of being trapped in the cell on Homeworld before Blue Zircon had come in and started panicking. He remembered how it felt when he was first in Rose’s room, surrounded by phantasmal reflections. And then, all of a sudden, he had the memory of being trapped on the jungle moon after crashing the spaceship, and being alone on the beach as a child.

“That’s — not right,” he murmured into his tea.

It wasn’t Steven, but Stevonnie. The memories were muddled and uncertain, because he had trained himself against keeping them tucked away. They weren’t his alone. They belonged to Stevonnie, to Connie as well. The feeling of truth would never be his to have alone. Was this selfishness? Steven gripped the mug, carefully leveraging his strength so the ceramic wouldn’t burst in his hands.

He hadn’t fused with Connie in so long. Wondering what it would feel like brought back more memories that he had to hush away. But the pit in his stomach grew moment by moment, swelling like a hairball made up of wire threads. Once a day, give or take, he checked in with Connie online, a message back and forth when either of them have the time. When they first got internet freedom, they used to send each other pictures and videos long past their bedtimes. Now that they didn’t have bedtimes, they hardly send a word through. 

Steven distracted his brain by wondering if this was irony or not, a train of thought that lasted approximately three seconds before a massive pink fireball burst into being at the end of the porch. Muscle memory around Lion’s entrances compelled him to go the only way he could. The railing was in front of him, the door was behind him, and there was only so much space on the boards.

The teenager jumped into the sky with his feet up, yelping as he clutched his mug. Lion bounded through the portal not a moment afterwards, paws pounding on the cold porch. Steven opened his mouth to scold the beast, and his mouth hung open for a moment.

Connie looked up and scoffed, as if she had expected Steven to be floating mid-air this whole time. She was dressed almost like she was going to school, in practical pants and sneakers, a light blue jogging jacket, and a hat her mother had knitted while on-call. Her schoolbag looked deflated, once packed to the gills and suffering now from a lack of engorgement. She waited for Steven to say something, but the boy just descended, attempting to form different sounds.

“Hey there, Steven,” Connie said with a raised eyebrow.

“Connie.”

She slid off the lion, rubbing her hands through his mane. Steven hadn’t expected her to come through with such a dramatic entrance, or for her to come at all. But he glanced to the house, at the empty counter where he should have been working.

“Did the Gems tell you about all this?” he said.

“What, about your day off? Yep! So, I thought I’d come over. We haven’t just hung out in such a long time!”

Steven opened his mouth, then faltered. She was right, but he felt so unprepared. There could be places that they could go and hang out, a regimen of activities he could have woken up early to be ready for. Connie showed up out of the blue and put him on the spot, and the boy could only sip his tea in sullen defeat. Connie’s smile started to fall. No, that was bad, he had to be gracious. Why wasn’t she smiling? Steven straightened his back and did his best welcoming face.

Connie broke eye contact and opened the door. Steven opened his mouth to apologize, but he didn’t know what for. Lion gave him a look and sauntered up, waiting for his so-called owner to go in. The boy ran in behind Connie, clutching his mug in both hands.

“I-I’m sorry, I just really didn’t expect you!” Steven said. “I’ve been so busy with Little Homeschool and stuff at home, a-and you’ve been in school, and I’m just so bad at keeping up with it all, y’know?”

“Pearl told me.”

“Oh. Okay, I guess I should have expected that —”

“She wanted to talk about a lot of things.”

There were fewer words that could have hit Steven in the stomach harder than that. Pearl had been privy through the grapevine to Steven’s outburst at graduation. She had probably mentioned the cactus and the destruction that had followed. No doubt, she would have wanted to gather with the other Gems and Connie to talk about his scheduling issues. All behind his back, no doubt. Steven wasn’t ready to talk about any of that with Connie. He watched her, wondering how she could be so calm as she slid her backpack down and took her jacket off, putting it on the back of a chair at the kitchen island like she would be here for a while.

“But I told her that I wanted to talk with you first.”

“W-what?” Steven said, before shaking himself out of it. “I mean, what about?”

“Well, I don’t know what about. That’s why I wanted to come over. I told her: what if you don’t want to talk? What if you just need to, you know, chill out for a while?”

Lion shoved his way past Steven with a knowing snort, sidling his way over to the couch. Ignoring him, the boy had to take stock of what Connie was asking. But she didn’t ask at all. The girl smoothed out her t-shirt and picked up her backpack.

There were errands that he could have been running, thrown off by his lack of alarm. He had skipped breakfast, but he could always make some oatmeal for the both of them, maybe even spruce it up with some fresh fruit if they had any. He had to do something, and yet his body wasn’t moving. Steven looked down into his tea and blinked at his own reflection. Being away from Connie for so long was stunning him, literally, and she was acting as though nothing had changed. The terrifying thought made Steven shudder and his tea wobble in the mug — maybe nothing  _ had _ changed.

“Are you okay, Steven?”

“Yeah! Yeah, I’m —”

He looked up and saw Connie staring at him eye to eye. She walked forward with a hint of a smile on her face. Steven saw the way she moved. It was like a video of a wildlife wrangler, a herpetologist in the wild approaching a venomous snake. Connie moved with caution and respect, one hand grasping the opposite wrist. Steven saw the gentle depressions under her eyes, her hair pulled back and tied up inelegantly, the wrinkles on her shirt like she had pulled it off the back of a chair. She was tired, too, but she seemed so alive, so happy to be here. And in that horrible moment, Steven hated himself for lying. He couldn’t lie to Connie, not now, not ever. He had made that mistake once on the beach and it had ruined him as a child. The only reason to lie was to protect her, and the only thing he was protecting her from was himself.

It was too much to deal with in the early afternoon of a lazy day. Steven shook his head slowly, walking forward to put his mug on the new table. There was no other noise. Connie stood still, as if she had been expecting this.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I...know.”

Connie took another step forwards, and Steven was about to cry when the shock of Connie grabbing his jacket zipper took hold. He felt his cheeks flushing in instant confusion, a knob turning in his head to let out all the nervous energy as Connie unzipped the jacket and let it fall open. But her hands came behind him, and she raised them past his shoulderblades to wrap around his torso as best she could. The hug wasn’t sudden, but it wasn’t slow. She was making sure he couldn’t wriggle out and sink. Could he thank her for that? Even if he wanted to, there were no words that came out of his mouth. Her fingers curved tenderly around his body, warm palms pushing in heat even through his shirt. Her chin settled on the tense part of his back, between the neck and the shoulder, nestling on the knots. Steven’s arms raised involuntarily. They draped over the top of Connie’s neck and shoulders, settling down in an awkward nest on her backpack. But he pulled her in closer, and the squeeze was returned in like kind.

Steven didn’t remember the last time he had hugged anyone like this. All the gaps in his memory were gaping, bleeding, bullets of awareness leaving holes the exact size of his wants. Even a year and a half ago, he could recall all of his adventures from the first time he set foot in the temple. They played from his tongue in vivid colors. Now, his body couldn’t even recall a hug, and it reacted with a strange shudder, trying to match this strange sensation with the muscle memory that had longed for touch for so many months.

The two teenagers separated. Connie pulled her hand from inside Steven’s jacket to reach up and wipe a tear away from the boy’s cheek. Her smile widened, and Steven let his own mouth do what it wanted. He had to let the involuntary happen. Maybe it was for the best.

“We’re not gonna talk right now, but you better believe you’re going to tell me everything when you’re ready,” Connie said, “and not a moment before.”

“I’ll tell you. But only if it’s just us. I… I don’t know if I’m ready for the Gems, or my dad, or anyone else.”

“You don’t have to think about being ready. You’ll just know. C’mon.”

Steven turned as Connie walked past, her other hand slipping away as she started up the stairs to Steven’s bedroom. He had to follow her. Lion’s lazy eye glimmered as it followed the two teenagers up to the bedroom. Cat Steven padded down from the top step to greet Connie on her way up, nuzzling against the girl’s leg.

“I remember you only have a VCR,” Connie said. “I picked up this thing at a thrift store for, like, ten bucks.”

Steven sat on the edge of his bed as he watched Connie kneel by his television. She unzipper her bag and pulled out a thick square box, about the size of a large book, with a circular cover impressed into the plastic. The composite cables followed after, shoved into some port underneath.

“Why’d you bring over an old DVD player?” Steven asked.

“Why do you think? For old DVDs!”

Steven glanced back to the head of the bed and grabbed some pillows, hoping they didn’t smell too much like teenage boy. He’d take the floor while Connie took the bed, just like when they were kids. Connie unplugged the dusty wires from his game console and plugged in the player. Steven watched her turn on the television with one hand and press the lid to make it open with the other. Static started to crackle until Connie changed the channels, flipping static through static until they got to the blue screen with the simple request: INSERT DISC.

“Do you remember that one night when we got a bunch of bad movies and watched them from the back of your dad’s van?”

“That was...two? Three years ago? Geez, I only remember a little bit.”

“I found some of our old good movies from then. Even the ones with the 3D glasses. But let’s not start the headaches so early in the day.”

Connie pulled out a plastic case, the matte cover sun-worn and a little wrinkled inside the front sleeve. It was the original  _ Dogcopter _ movie. That took Steven back even farther than that summer. He raised his eyebrows, blowing out a long, low whistle. Connie giggled, and didn’t wait for any approval before popping out the disc.

The menuing was the same without a remote. Connie adjusted the channels, skipped through the trailers for movies that had come and gone past their prime, including the  _ Dogcopter _ webpage that had been since converted into a Dog-and-Pupcopter tab on some broadcast studio’s main site. Every show he used to watch had one of those, where he played flash games and browsed through TubeTube videos for hours on rainy days. How could he have wasted so much time? But for the first moment, Steven chastised himself. How could he have known that time would be wasted at all? And he knew if he told Connie that, she’d tell him how that time wasn’t wasted if he was happy.

He was happy now. Steven pulled up his legs to his chest as Connie came to his bed, kicking her shoes off before climbing on top of his comforter. The boy stared at the grainy opening credits when he felt a hand on his lower neck pushing him forwards. He scooted an inch, and Connie slipped in a pillow behind him. It was just as soft as when he woke up. Steven looked up at Connie, as she laid on her stomach, another pillow tucked underneath her torso. If she smelled anything, she didn’t say it, or she didn’t mind. There was no use in being self-conscious now. It had never mattered before.

The movie opened with an immediate explosion, a mile-a-minute cartoon that blazed right into the introduction of Dogcopter’s past, his present, his ret-conned motivation that Steven knew would change over each stranger sequel. Plot points only made as much sense as they had to for children. If there was an underlying narrative, Steven didn’t care to analyze it. Connie laughed at the cheesiness above him. Minute by minute, Steven felt himself smiling. He wanted to fight the muscles, but he couldn’t concentrate. That was the trick of it all. The less he concentrated on anything, the more he thought about Connie.

Happiness was the returned memory of falling asleep in the lawn chair with his head leaning against hers as the sounds of English voice acting played over the parking lot. Happiness was floating down to Ruby and Sapphire’s wedding and looking over the gathered guests, his tongue so eager to trip over his words when he saw Connie smiling at him. To be happy, after this solace, would be to climb up onto the bed and lie on his stomach with her, to nestle up with nobody else home, breath bated for the sound of the warp pad or an opening door. Steven knew exactly why, and his throat closed up the moment he tried to put it into words. Not here, not now. Now was the time for explosions.

“Did you bring all the sequels?” he asked instead. “I have the feeling we’ll be here for a while.”

“I even brought over some good ones, if you want. We can switch whenever you feel like it. Sound good?”

Steven took a breath, then raised his hand up over his shoulder. He kept his eyes on the screen and tried not to shudder as Connie adjusted herself to hold his hand. Her grip squeezed his palm and released like a heartbeat. She didn’t let go, and Steven would have asked her to hold on even if she tried to. The touch was calming again. Being together was no longer painful, at least not as long as they were alone. In public, around the Gems, around family — he had no idea. His reactions hadn’t been the best. But he’d be ready. He had to be, or he’d lose Connie. Steven didn’t look up at her. Losing her would destroy him.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “I’ll just know.”


End file.
